Stallions of Science
by DanCandor
Summary: Hundreds of years in the future, the ponies of Equestria have spread out among the stars. Princess Luna commissions the greatest minds in pony space for a secret project. Then the madness begins.


**Stallions of Science**

**Chapter 1:**

Kelvin stood behind the quartz blast shield. It was over six feet thick, and ionized to add extra radiation protection. The only reason the quartz blast shield existed was because it was simply pony tradition to construct too many protective barriers between themselves and their experiments. Ponies hadn't needed physical protection in nearly three centuries. They could even survive for days in the vacuum of space, seemingly naked. Like everypony else, Kelvin was augmented at birth with an inner power core that fueled an ultra-hard shield. When Kelvin joined the Army, he was fitted with a laser rifle attachment on his right shoulder. When he joined the Special Forces two years later, the Army added a radiation grenade launcher, an active camouflage upgrade to his shield, and a poison pellet launcher for quiet take-downs. That was just a few years ago. Now Kelvin worked for the Lunar Republic as a disposable scientist.

"Forty-two seconds until disruption of the stellar corona of UrsaX2Y3Z-14."

Kelvin rolled his eyes and opened up a public channel, "No one will be confused if you call it Ursa 6, please use that name in the future to cut down on channel time."

"Roger, thirty-five seconds until we open up Ursa 6."

The voice on the other end of the mic was Delta Vega, a rather new stallion to the operation. He still felt like using the Coltesian coordinate system for the local star cluster. The "X2Y3Z-14" meant that their particular star was two parsecs positive on the x-axis, three positive on the y-axis, and fourteen negative along the z-axis, all in relation to the estimated Galactic center.

Delta Vega was a technical pony, he loved sounding as official as possible. Kelvin admired that in his weekly reports, but over chat-channels it got extremely annoying. This was not the first time that Kelvin had to remind him to cut the excessive chatter.

Kelvin focused his gaze through the quartz blast shield. He sat in a massive starship that hovered just a light month away from their target star: Ursa 6. Truth be told this was not the same "Ursa" that all the little ponies in Equestria learned about. This Ursa was on the complete opposite side of the galaxy, named such by a very unoriginal and uninspired pony some one-hundred years ago. This Ursa cluster was shaped nothing like a bear, even to the most creative imaginations. To Kelvin, it looked like his childhood home on Boonwind.

"T-minus five, four, three, two, one...disrupting corona."

A beautiful flare coalesced before Kelvin's eyes. His retinal lenses filtered the light to more than manageable brightness. They also heightened the contrast to make the events happening to the star more easily discernible.

"Corona is opening up, chromosphere now accessible. Launching Probe." Kelvin felt the ship actually shudder as it launched a kilometer long sliver of metal loaded with sensors and shields towards the star. "Probe away, optimal velocity attained. Now entering hyper-fall phasing sequence." Kelvin was always extremely fascinated with this particular part of the operation. The Probe had to travel much faster than the speed of light, and unfortunately the only objects in the known universe that can do that naturally are neutrinos. Therefore the Probe had the same technology as the average starship, only partially modified. A normal starship's hyper drive was not designed to fall into hyperspace and then almost instantly jump back into real space. A starship's hyper drive was designed to be activated once and then deactivated upon arrival to a destination after a certain amount of time. However, the Probe's hyper drive was designed to pulse, allowing its drops into hyperspace to slow down the Probe itself, reducing its exposure to real space, before jumping back up for a final time into the core of the star. All the ponies had to do was use magnetic fields to disrupt the star's corona, the thickest, hottest atmosphere of the star, and the most likely to cause problems when the Probe spent it's nanoseconds in real space. By the time the Probe settled in the star's core, all of its shields and fail safes would be up and running.

Kelvin opened a channel to Starry Light. "How are the readouts on that probe?"

"They are just gorgeous, Kelvin. The hyper drive is functioning at 62% capacity, exactly as predicted, and it's slowing down wonderfully. We're already getting raw data from onboard spectrometers. Heat analysis is good to go. I really believe the Marque III will be the one. Third time's the charm, right?"

Kelvin cringed a little at Starry Light's brevity towards their teams' past failures. Those Probes had cost six trillion bits apiece. The starship Kelvin was currently seated on cost less than that. Goodness knows why or how Her Majesty, Princess Luna kept funding them. The previous Marques of their project didn't even hold the glory of spectacular failures. The first fell into hyper space and never returned. The second was only partially completed before the design was scrapped in favor of the current one. Kelvin hoped that the Marque III was the Probe to change their reputation. If it was a success, it would not only mean a permanent position on the team for himself, they would also change the lives of billions of ponies in poverty all over the galaxy.

"The Probe has T-minus three jumps remaining until arrival. Two…one…the Probe is now in the stellar core! Holding…holding! Shields stabilized. Total equilibrium attained. Congratulations, everypony!"

Kelvin bucked like a wild bronco, whooping and cheering. The public channel sounded loudly with happy exclamations from the other teams.

Delta Vega was laughing into the channel, "Champagne all around!"

* * *

><p>Two glasses of champagne later, Kelvin was smiling more than he usually would. He was sitting with the other stallions of his team: Starry Light, Delta Vega, Sunspot, and Flare. All of their cutie marks had something to do with stars, while Kelvin's was the only one that had nothing to do with his actual job: an old-fashioned thermometer and a quill. Kelvin found that it was much easier to stare at his teams' cutie marks with a pint of champagne in him.<p>

Sunspot was the first to dispel the wonderful mood. "So, we're halfway done. All we need to do is activate the Sinkhole, eh? With our luck, that'll be the thing that goes horribly wrong, am I right?" He then followed this statement by braying like a common donkey.

Delta Vega interjected with: "Will you shut up? You're always so pessimistic."

Sunspot brayed even harder. "You know what they call a pessimist? An optimist with actual life experience!"

"I'm not sure if that's the actual phrase…" Flare said quietly.

"I am only joking Delta, we've done a banger of a job with the Marque III. If it were any more perfect, it wouldn't exist." Sunspot grinned shamelessly then downed another glass of champagne. "Ack! This spirit is too darn soft for a crazy stallion such as me. Did anyone bring whiskey?"

"Whiskey is contraband…" Flare said even more quietly.

Starry Light smirked at Sunspot, "I've got whiskey in my cabin. You can drop by for a drink later."

Sunspot grinned sheepishly this time. "I will most certainly be taking you up on that offer!"

"Relations between team members are forbidden…" Flare squeaked, barely audible.

Kelvin allowed himself another glass and absent-mindedly wandered away from his team. He found himself in the main corridor of the starship, heading slowly towards the hangar bay. His thoughts turned to Boonwind, and to his family. His parents were retired now, both had massive pensions. His sister was just now entering the Royal Academy of Science. His life had been borderline perfect growing up. He had displayed enormous promise as a colt, and so his parents enrolled him an honors school for colts with a heavy focus on practical sciences. Kelvin had earned his cutie mark after writing his graduate thesis proposing a brand new system for measuring temperature. Quite literally as soon as he had handed it in and his teacher's jaw dropped, there was a flash and his cutie mark appeared on his flank. It was one of the happiest memories he had.

The massive hangar bay door loomed before him. He keyed in his code and it opened more quietly than it appeared it would. He trotted all the way to the airlock. He opened the inner door and walked in. Life really was good, wasn't it? He had a job that, while not at all relevant to his special talent, paid extremely well. The amount of pride he felt for the recent success of the Marque III outshone anything else he ever knew. Those other failures though, they were something different. He had never failed before. Life breezed on by, success after success. He saw himself as a golden pony of perfection. He knew he was wrong.

Kelvin sealed the inner door and set the outer door to open in a few seconds. He just needed to get away. He closed his eyes. With an abrasively loud hiss, the outer door opened, and Kelvin was sucked into the cold, hard vacuum of outer space.

* * *

><p>Two hours later, Kelvin was nestled cozily in his bed. His little excursion was therapeutic for him, and he had felt his shame and annoyance with himself melt away. Floating through space with his shields only requiring 2% of full power to keep him alive was a rush at first, but then his heart rate had slowed, and he felt at peace. His team had given him a questioning look when he floated back into the hanger bay, but he ignored them.<p>

Now his thoughts turned to his beloved Princess Luna. He had been granted several audiences with her over the course of his life. The most recent one was his least favorite, as it involved him groveling for more funds so that they could attempt the Marque III Probe.

Luna was always kind to him, kinder than she was known to be to the myriad subjects who came to her with whatever trivial issues they had. His first audience with her was upon the acceptance of his proposal for his new system of measuring temperature, which he named after himself. The Counsel of Domestic Affairs had agreed unanimously upon his system, and it was to begin integration immediately. Luna was astounded that such a young pony could think of an efficient new way for notarizing extremes in temperature, even making jokes about the temperature of the Moon using units of Kelvin. Only two months later and Luna had summoned him by name for another audience. Kelvin was shocked that the Princess would remember him. He wondered why she had summoned him.

"I just wanted to speak with you." Luna had smiled.

"What about, my Princess?" Kelvin was understandably nervous.

Luna laughed. It was a beautiful sound. Kelvin felt his heart melt. She then said, "I simply wanted to speak to you about anything. I'm not sure if I can repeat myself enough to clarify what I mean. I summoned you because I would like to enjoy your presence."

The way Kelvin's mouth gaped was very unbecoming of a genius colt currently standing in front of a goddess of the moon and stars.

Princess Luna smiled warmly at him, "Come, let me show you something." He followed her out of the Throne Room and into a tiny side room. There was absolutely nothing in it. The walls were flat and boring stone, the floor was black and white checkerboard marble, and the ceiling was a simple dome with a small brass lamp hanging from the center. Luna turned to him and noticed his confusion. "This room is extremely special, in that inside it there is nothing special at all. It is what's just outside it that matters. You did not notice, but you passed through and extremely powerful field while walking in. This field surrounds the entire room. It cannot be penetrated with any weapon, or any spying device. It even lets me do something that my sister only just barely mastered with her own natural power."

Kelvin blinked. "What—

They were very suddenly in a different room, and a barely noticeable moment of disorientation flashed in and out of existence in Kelvin's brain. He blinked again. "P-Princess? What was that?"

Luna just looked at him. Then the penny dropped.

"DID WE JUST…JUST…TELEPORT?" Kelvin started breathing very heavily.

"Relax! Kelvin, yes, we did just teleport. That is the special trait of the Quantum Entanglement Field."

"I…I…" Kelvin could barely get the words out, "I wrote an essay on that in school! I wrote about how practical teleportation is unfeasible because it implies the destruction and reconstitution of organic life and therefore causes the death of the original and the construction of a multiverse copy on the other end!"

Luna seemed rather taken aback. "You wrote an essay about such a topic at your age?"

This time it was Kelvin's turn to just look at her. Then she remembered.

"Ah right, a colt genius." She smiled. "It is true; teleportation as it was imagined long ago would involve the death of the original person teleporting, being that the teleportation device needs to rip them apart, atom by atom, to send them somewhere else. Could the metaphysical mind survive such an experience? To be honest, even I have no idea."

"So what you're saying, your Highness is that I died just now? And that I am just a copy of the original?" Kelvin now felt very nauseous.

Luna laughed so hard she actually neighed. "Heavens no, dear! That's the beauty of the Q.E.F.; it doesn't tear you to pieces to send you somewhere else. Simply will yourself to be elsewhere, and you will be. There is deep science and magic involved in a spell such as this."

"So it's true that you still use magic?" Magic had not mattered for hundreds of years. The early pony civilization was arranged with an aristocracy of unicorns, upper-middle class pegasi, and working class earth ponies. Because the unicorns had magic, they were many times more skilled with intricate work than the pegasi and earth ponies. Science was their forte. A singularity was soon reached, in which technology could erase the lines between ponies, and everyone became equal. Magic was barely used today. Except by the Princess, apparently.

"Of course I use magic. I am Princess Luna, ruler of the Lunar Republic! My magic is more powerful than the greatest of weapons, medicines or shields!"

"…But, you couldn't even teleport."

More of that wonderful laughter. "This is true. I could not, not without a little science to aid me. Something about my magic is limited by my own consciousness. While I am awake, I cannot transport my whole body, my magical aura, or my mind to another place, not even a few feet away. I suspect if I could train myself in sleep walking, I'd be able to subconsciously do it. But alas, I cannot sleepwalk, as I no longer need to sleep. I only enter a form of deep meditation whilst my aura performs all the duties of regular R.E.M. sleep."

"Princess?"

"Yes, Kelvin?"

"You're amazing."

Luna did not respond verbally. She leaned down and kissed the top of his head very gently. The rest of the day was just as incredible.

* * *

><p>"Pre-loading raw data to the servers is much easier than sending it straight to our mainframe. I can't believe it took me a month to figure that out, either! You'd think after watching the main crash two or three times a day, I'd say to myself 'there must be an easier way to do this! You know what? I should try commandeering Rigel's storage servers, upload a few equations, and then start sending the data through the servers to eliminate redundant information and sort out priority data.' But no, it took a month. I truly am an idiot sometimes." Delta Vega ranted loudly.<p>

"What's this about you being an idiot sometimes? We tend to experience your idiocy at a constant rate," Sunspot spewed around a mouthful of bacon and eggs.

"Yeah? This coming from the pony who mistypes the McCauley Principle into the computer almost every day, causing at least ten minutes of setbacks?" Delta Vega retorted quickly.

"What? Every bloody day? Please, that happened twice!" Sunspot was spitting chunks of bacon all over the table.

"I wish we'd stop the shouting…" Flare whispered.

"Actually, it happened four times, but that's still a far cry from saying it happened every day, Delta." Starry Light usually tried to mediate the friendly arguments, just to make sure they stayed friendly.

"Aye and I apologized endlessly for each bloody occasion." Sunspot calmly returned to his breakfast. He took a whole flapjack and shoved it into his mouth.

Kelvin trotted up to the table "Is everypony just about done? The schedule has changed; our team is supervising activation of the Sinkhole at 1100 hours now, which means prep needs to start at 0900, which is in approximately forty-five minutes. I want everypony cleaned and ready on the Command Deck at exactly 0830. That's fifteen minutes from now, so let's hurry up, ponies!" He then set off at a canter, catching a last glimpse of Sunspot shoveling all the food he could into his mouth.

Perhaps his team wasn't the most professional bunch, but they were good. Perhaps not the best, per say, but really quite good. Flare in particular was amazing when it came to finding patterns in freshly processed data. While there was no mention of Autism or Savantism in Flare's dossier, Kelvin suspected that the pony did indeed have a mild form of either disorder; the stallion's social skills were borderline nonexistent, but he was still a highly functioning member of the team, able to communicate clearly when necessary, and yet still possessing an uncanny knack for information regarding stellar formation. Either way, Kelvin was particularly grateful to have him on his team. It was Flare who calculated Ursa 6's potential candidacy for Probe Project, saying that it would be the best star to open, despite there still being four hundred other usable stars. A month later, the mainframe decided that Ursa 6 would be the best star, for all the reasons that Flare had predicted.

Kelvin found himself at the door to the Command Deck. That was fast. He keyed in his code and was immediately greeted by the horrendous visage of the Commander's Secretary, Elision. "Why hello there, Kelvin! You're awfully early, aren't you? The Commander wasn't expecting your team for another fifteen minutes, I'd say."

"I've come earlier than my team. I wish to speak with the Commander."

"Ah! Have at it, dear boy, he's sitting in his favorite chair. I'm off to run some reports! I'll be seeing you later then." Elision cantered past and disappeared around the corner. What a goofball.

Kelvin walked further into the Command Deck. It looked like the bridge of a starship from any old sci-fi flick. Everything was shiny, lights were glowing on screens, and a few ponies trotted about, checking things that looked important. The Commander sat in his favorite chair, which happened to be the biggest chair in the room, and also the one in which a Commander is supposed to sit when…commanding. Halcyon Rise was an imposing figure of a pony. His coat was of the deepest black, almost unreflective, while his mane was the purest of whites. His eyes were a deep sea blue, and his cutie mark was that of a golden Ankh and silver arrow crossed. Kelvin's own Pistachio green coat and light brown mane surely looked deplorable to the Commander.

Halcyon Rise looked at him and smiled. "Kelvin. You are early. I presume that means you wish to have a private discussion?"

Kelvin lowered his head respectfully, "Yes sir. Assuming this project is completed successfully, we are scheduled to return to the Lunar Republic in two days' time."

"Yes…" Halcyon seemed puzzled as to where this was going.

"Well, I was wondering if on our way back, you could let me take one of the shuttles to a nearby star system. I can rendezvous with the starship back in orbit above Neverfar." Kelvin swallowed anxiously.

Halcyon Rise was no fool, but he trusted Kelvin implicitly. "I will not ask for what purpose you wish to commandeer one of our shuttles, although I can see the matter is of some discomfort to you. Take Shuttle 9 at your leisure."

Kelvin smiled warmly. "Thank you Commandeer. Once we rendezvous again, I won't have any issue telling you what I require the Shuttle for, but for now I feel a need to remain clandestine."

"So be it. Before your team arrives tell me, how is my nephew doing?" Halcyon now seemed somewhat concerned.

"Flare? He's doing great. That colt is amazing when it comes to finding patterns in the seemingly random stellar corona of Ursa 6. He figured out exactly where to disrupt the corona to launch the Probe all by himself, without the aid of a computer."

"Good. I worry too much, I know. He is…different." Halcyon stopped, uncomfortable and unsure of what else to say.

Just then, the door to the Command Deck whooshed open, and Kelvin's team came striding in. "Everypony is present and accounted for. Not that it's hard to lose track of five ponies living in one area of a starship." Starry Light said.

Kelvin looked at them, ready to get down to science. "Alright, the Commander has graciously given us use of his arrays so that we can make all of our preparations on a closed network. Starry, Delta, start looking at the Probe's shield data and link directly to its power core instead of to its mainframe. I want you two making adjustments on the fly, with your focus on shields only. Flare, you're on data watch. Keep an eye posted to every equation we upload, every command we send, and every typo that Sunspot makes. Sunspot, don't make any typos. That is all. Let's look alive and begin prepping our stations. Go."

Everypony jumped to their duties with admirable gusto. Flare was going over equations and commands that he'd written the night before, so he had some available time to double check everyone else's work. Kelvin was somehow content to see Flare trotting up to everyone, consulting with them, taking notes, and looking over his own work. He noted that Halcyon seemed pleased as well. Flare never had a breach of social etiquette, nor any kind of strange behavior normally associated with Autism, yet Kelvin suspected that Halcyon was still constantly nervous that something would happen, something embarrassing. But nothing happened at all. Flare continued to work admirably, even smiling a little, his orange coat shining in the starlight coming from Ursa 6. Flare occasionally came up to Kelvin and asked his opinion on different matters, each time Kelvin had almost nothing to say, as the work Flare did was normally flawless anyway.

Prep time passed quickly with everypony busy, and before Kelvin knew it, the time was 1055 hours, and they were just minutes away from activation. The Sinkhole was the single most expensive and dangerous piece of technology in the Probe. It was developed in secret, although it has been theorized for centuries after scientists discovered black holes. Just as a black hole was a star that fell into its own gravity well, the Sinkhole would create a miniscule black hole using antimatter annihilation at the center of Ursa 6. In fact, the black hole was going to be exactly one millimeter in diameter. At the bottom of the Sinkhole's gravity well would be something that Kelvin had no idea about. It was not his team's duty. All that Kelvin knew was that it would be a super absorbent object or field that would harvest the star's raw power and then distribute it to approximately twenty seven of the Lunar Republic's ninety-nine worlds. Precisely how this was done, Kelvin was not allowed to know. Only the Commander knew every detail of this project, which was the first of its kind, commissioned by Luna herself.

"T-minus two minutes until Sinkhole activation. Syncing shields to antimatter timer. Data collection complete, Probe now expendable." Because the antimatter annihilation would destroy the Probe and everything on board, deeming the Probe expendable was the best euphemism for purposefully blowing up a six trillion bit piece of hardware. It was the only way that they could get steady, overnight collection of stellar data that many scientific institutions would love to have, while simultaneously creating the Sinkhole without needing to build multiple, expensive vessels. It simply wasn't economically feasible to send a Probe in and then take it back out, and then send in an antimatter bomb. One chance, one piece of equipment was all they could afford right now. This needed to be done. They owed it to all the ponies in poverty that could not pay for the nuclear power service. Ursa 6 would provide them with free power for decades to come.

"Shields are functioning wonderfully," Starry Light said. "T-minus one minute until deactivation." The Probe's shields were designed to turn off exactly one picosecond before the antimatter detonated.

Flare trotted up to Kelvin. "All the equations are sound. The commands are all typed correctly." He said this slightly louder than usual. Kelvin noticed a shine in Flare's eyes. He was excited. This made Kelvin smile fondly.

"T-minus ten seconds until deactivation!"

Kelvin exhaled and nervously opened his array. The timer ticked down before his vision, displayed on his retinal lenses. His brain would give the command directly to the Probe. A large blue circle glowed under the timer.

"T-minus five seconds."

The blue circle pulsed with each second that passed. Kelvin felt his coat shiver involuntarily. For the poor and weak, he told himself.

"Three, two, one."

Kelvin mentally pressed the bright blue button. A small window replaced the timer. It read "signal with Probe lost." Everyone breathed a sigh of relief. That meant that either the shields deactivated and nothing happened, or the antimatter detonated. Either way, what's done is done.

Delta got onto the chat channel with Mithra Dark's team, the ones monitoring wherever the black hole was sending Ursa 6's power. As soon as he connected with them, he jumped. They were screaming. "What's going on?" He roared into the microphone. He glanced at Kelvin. His eyes lost focus and his mouth started moving silently. He whirled around and looked at the Commander. "Get us into hyperspace, now!"

Kelvin was about to ask what was wrong, when he saw the star move out of the corner of his eye. He turned to look directly at it. Then, he was very suddenly somewhere else.

To Be Continued…


End file.
